ARREST EVADED

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 36, 12 February 1938, Page 13

ARREST EVADED

AUCKLAND SENSATION

RAID BY DETECTIVES

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, February 11

Risking his life in an effort to' evade arrest, a man. fled blindly from detectives who raided premises on the second floor of the Arcade tonight. He crashed through a glass cover over an oi-namental skylight that spans the Arcade and then through the skylight itself to hang by his hands 35ft above horrified crowds. The man then threw himself backward and landed safely on a first-floor balcony. He recovered his balance and disappeared.

The raiding party arrested 26 men on gaming charges after forcing its way into a large room. The men were later charged before justices.

Late shopping crowds thronged both entrances to the Arcade, and a large force of uniformed police was necessary to keep the public from entering. The crashing of glass was followed immediately by a louder crash as a section of the leadlight that forms the ceiling of the arcade smashed on the concrete paving among startled pedestrians and shopkeepers. Fragments of glass rained down, and people in the vicinity ran for shelter.

"I was at my desk writing when I heard a terrific crash," said Mr. P. D. Kenny, outside whose premises a large piece of lcadlight fell. "I ran outside and heard another crash. As I went from the doorway I could see the legs and body of a man projecting through the skylight. As the man came through the skylight, which gave way under his weight, he managed to grab two sides of the steel frame, which saved him from falling 30 feet or more to the concrete. He looked round, seeming perfectly cool and then started to swing like a man on a trapeze. Onlookers feared he would fall and be injured or perhaps killed. I called out to him to hang on and not attempt to jump. The man looked down and apparently realised for the first time how far he had to fall. He then started swinging again and when he had gained enough impetus he hurled himself backward and over the railing of the first-floor balcony. Landing on hi* feet, the man recovered his balance and then ran and disappeared."

Breaking their way through two firmly-secured doors, detectives found 26 men in a room from which the first man apparently escaped. The glass of a large window opening immediately above the skylight cover was gone from the frame, and it is believed the man leaped straight through when the alarm was given. There was a gaping hole in the skylight cover through which he had fallen, and about two feet below was the skylight along which he had attempted to crawl.